Convenient Timing Possibly? - Seymour Hersh Article

I guess things worked out with perfect timing for Israel as well as the US. It seems they would have done the dirty work with or without an attack. Was just reading this article written by The New Yorker Magazine. Its pretty long but it gives some insight into the players in this little fiasco.

WATCHING LEBANON
Washington’s interests in Israel’s war.
by SEYMOUR M. HERSH
Issue of 2006-08-21
Posted 2006-08-14


In the days after Hezbollah crossed from Lebanon into Israel, on July 12th, to kidnap two soldiers, triggering an Israeli air attack on Lebanon and a full-scale war, the Bush Administration seemed strangely passive. “It’s a moment of clarification,” President George W. Bush said at the G-8 summit, in St. Petersburg, on July 16th. “It’s now become clear why we don’t have peace in the Middle East.” He described the relationship between Hezbollah and its supporters in Iran and Syria as one of the “root causes of instability,” and subsequently said that it was up to those countries to end the crisis. Two days later, despite calls from several governments for the United States to take the lead in negotiations to end the fighting, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said that a ceasefire should be put off until “the conditions are conducive.”

The Bush Administration, however, was closely involved in the planning of Israel’s retaliatory attacks. President Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney were convinced, current and former intelligence and diplomatic officials told me, that a successful Israeli Air Force bombing campaign against Hezbollah’s heavily fortified underground-missile and command-and-control complexes in Lebanon could ease Israel’s security concerns and also serve as a prelude to a potential American preëmptive attack to destroy Iran’s nuclear installations, some of which are also buried deep underground.

Israeli military and intelligence experts I spoke to emphasized that the country’s immediate security issues were reason enough to confront Hezbollah, regardless of what the Bush Administration wanted. Shabtai Shavit, a national-security adviser to the Knesset who headed the Mossad, Israel’s foreign-intelligence service, from 1989 to 1996, told me, “We do what we think is best for us, and if it happens to meet America’s requirements, that’s just part of a relationship between two friends. Hezbollah is armed to the teeth and trained in the most advanced technology of guerrilla warfare. It was just a matter of time. We had to address it.”

New Yorker - Seymour Hersh artcle

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[edit on 8/15/2006 by Gools]

Originally posted by ThePieMaN

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[edit on 8/15/2006 by Gools]

Gracias Gools

For anyone interested here is an interview of Seymour Hersh about this, complete with transcript or you can watch it on the website, on the news show Democracy Now with Amy Goodman journalist.


www.democracynow.org.../08/14/1358255

Convenient in what way thepieman?

I believe there is a chance that this could be disinfo aimed at throwing Syria off the fact that it's next, not Iran.

Originally posted by subz
Convenient in what way thepieman?

I believe there is a chance that this could be disinfo aimed at throwing Syria off the fact that it's next, not Iran.

Well convenient in that an attack was to be imminent. The kidnapping was just a good reason. The US wanted the rear to be clear of Hizbollah when they attack Iran and Israel obviously wants Hizbollah out of the way so they could get to Lebanon. The 2 had common wants. Bush is determined to attack Iran and Israel wants unhindered access to Lebanon as well as the threat of Iran having any type of nuclear capability. They enjoy the imbalance that they have been taking advantage of for over 20+ years with their nuclear ambiguity.



Pie

Given the fact that the plan to invade Lebanon was already in the works earlier this spring then one has to wonder if the soldiers were ordered to be where they were, so the Israeli's would have an excuse to invade Lebanon once they were captured or killed, early reports were that the two Israeli soldiers were inside the borders of Lebanon.

www.democracynow.org.../08/14/1358255

Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh reports in this week's issue of the New Yorker that Israeli officials visited the White House earlier this summer to get a "green light" for an attack on Lebanon. The Bush administration approved, Hersh says, in part to remove Hezbollah as a deterrent to a potential US bombing of Iran

A major new article says U.S. support for the invasion of Lebanon has gone even further than we already know. That in fact, White House support for the massive bombing of Lebanon even predates the day those two Israeli soldiers were seized.

[edit on 17-8-2006 by goose]